LAKE BAIKAL : THE WORLD DEEPEST LAKE

Baikal is the world's deepest lake in the world. it the largest freshwater lake by volume in the world, containing 22–23% of the world's fresh surface water.

With 23,615.39 km³ (5,670 cu mi) of fresh water, it contains more water than the North American Great Lakes combined. With a maximum depth of 1,642 m (5,387 ft), it is considered among the world's clearest lakes and is considered the world's oldest lake, at 25–30 million years. It is the seventh-largest lake in the world by surface area.

LOCATION

Lake Baikal is located in southern Siberia in south-central Russia near the Mongolian border. The largest nearby city is Irkutsk. Lake Baikal surrounded by mountains, forests and wild rivers.

👀Do you know?

👉WHY LAKE BAIKAL IS SO DEEP?

👉HOW LAKE BAIKAL DID GETS ITS NAME?

FACTS

The area of Lake Baikal is about equal to the area of the whole country – Belgium.
Water in the Lake Baikal is completely renewed approximately every 383 years.
It contains 20% of the world’s total unfrozen freshwater reserve.
Ice on Lake Baikal in many places is completely transparent.
Lake Baikal is considered one of the clearest lakes in the world, according to CNN Traveler.

AMAZING PHENOMENA

When the lake freezes during the winter, an amazing phenomena takes place: large shards of transparent ice form on the surface of the lake, giving the amazing appearance of turquoise ice.

LAKE BAIKAL SIZE

Volume: 5,521 cubic miles of water (23,013 cubic kilometers). This volume is approximately equivalent to all five of the North American Great Lakes combined.

Maximum depth: 5,354 feet (1,632 meters). Its lowest point lies more than 4,000 feet (1,219 m) below sea level.

Average depth: 2,442 feet (744 m), according to Smithsonian magazine.

Surface area: 12,248 square miles (31,722 square km), according to Smithsonian magazine. This area puts it in seventh place worldwide in terms of surface area.

Length: 397 miles (640 km).

Maximum width: 49 miles (79.5 km).

Average width: 29 miles (47 km).

Minimum width: 16 miles (25 km).

Coastline area: 1,300 miles (2,100 km).

HOW LAKE BAIKAL DID GETS ITS NAME?

The origin of the name Baikal comes from Baigal or Байгал which is translated from the Mongolian language as "nature". It is also known as the Blue Eye of Siberia.

FLORA AND FAUNA

Lake Baikal is home to more than 2,000 species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which can be found nowhere else in the world, including the omul fish and Baikal oil fish as well as the nerpa, one of the world's only freshwater species of seal.

FLORA

The watershed of Lake Baikal has numerous floral species represented. The marsh thistle (Cirsium palustre) is found here at the eastern limit of its geographic range.

FAUNA

Baikal seal

Found only in Lake Baikal, the Baikal seal (Pusa sibirica), also known as the nerpa, is one of the only freshwater seal species in the world.

Birds

There are 236 species of birds that inhabit Lake Baikal, 29 of which are waterfowl. Although named after the lake, both the Baikal teal and Baikal bush warbler are widespread in eastern Asia.

Fish

Two species of grayling (Thymallus baikalensis and T. brevipinnis) are found only in Baikal and rivers that drain into the lake.

Fewer than 65 native fish species occur in the lake basin, but more than half of these are endemic.

Abyssocottid sculpins, they are the deepest living freshwater fish in the world, occurring to near the bottom of Lake Baikal.

TOURISM

How many tourist visited in lake Baikal?

Baikal is annually visited by more than 2 million tourists from all over the world.

How to travel to Lake Baikal?

You can visit Lake Baikal via a five-and-a-half hour flight from Moscow to Irkutsk, or by taking the Trans-Siberian Railway to Irkutsk. For a more luxurious journey, consider the Golden Eagle train.

LAKE BAIKAL HISTORY

At least 25 million years old, Lake Baikal is the oldest lake in the world. It and the surrounding mountains were formed by the Earth's crust fracturing and moving. According to Baikal World Web, it was probably originally a riverbed, but tremors and fractures in the Earth's crust increased the size and widened the space between the shores. Parts of the Baikal basin developed at different times throughout the Tertiary Period (66 million to 2.6 million years ago). Melting glaciers also increased the water levels.